Painter anticipates first Artist Project appearance

Abstract artist Gloria Green is running out of room at her Yonge and Davenport area loft.

She’s seated at a dining room table, subtle lines of paint aging it beyond its solid wood frame, as she shares her passion for abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

Green looks around at the corners filled with waiting canvasses, and up at the walls, covered with her work, while husband Bill Spratt smiles.

“The art has taken over, which I don’t mind, but I do want more space to create more and continue,” Green admits. “You can’t live without art.”

Spratt lets out a chuckle, before leaving the apartment to run errands.

“Look at it, right?”

Still, the 51-year-old Green, who works as a dietician at Sick Kids Hospital, feels right at home as she enters the crunch time leading into her first Artist Project art fair, Feb. 19-22.

She’ll be exhibiting her most recent series, Clusterphelia, in Booth 615 at the Better Living Centre, a prospect she says she’s thrilled by.

The Artist Project is a juried event, and offers visual art aficionados the opportunity to buy pieces directly from over 250 artists.

Clusterphelia is the 10th series where Green plays with shapes, colours and the varying inspirations ranging from music to fashion to design and the emotional side of her job, tending to the dietary needs of children with cancer.

The art allows her to purge by way of acrylic.

“[My job] can be challenging — stressful — but rewarding,” she says. “So, I think it’s great when you come home and you have a balance.

“It just lets me transpire those feelings on canvas.”

She first picked up the brush when she moved to her loft some 10 years ago. She bought a few canvases, but wanted to hone her skills with the help of professionals.

Green attended Avenue Road Art School, where artist Lydia Panart inspired her.

“I was hooked,” Green admits. “She was a positive influence, liked my work, and told me to keep going.”

It’s not the first time she’s let her artistic proclivities guide her. She’s been trained in classical piano, since the age 4, and a grand piano shares the loft with the canvases.

Clusterphelia is rife with circles in bright or contrasting colours on a white background. They appear playful, but little rivulets of paint stream down from some, offering the interpretation of some instability to that joy.

“I’m in the circle phase — I’m kind of obsessed with them at the moment,” Green admits. “I like working with different colours, too: mixing and the different combinations. It seems endless, like a circle.”